


An Unfortunate Honor: Bearing, Duty, And Other Troubles

by twofoldAxiom



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst, Aphrodisiacs, Blood Drinking, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Caste Dynamics, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Disturbing Themes, Dubious Consent, Egg Laying, Eggpreg, Electrocution, Emetophilia, Emetophobia, F/F, F/M, Fetishization, Fuck Or Die, Fuck Or Die Themes, Grubs (Homestuck), Hermaphroditic Trolls, Infantophagia, Intermissions, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Medical Torture, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Multi, NaNoWriMo, Non-Canon Caste Dynamics, Not Canon Compliant, Objectification, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Oviparous Trolls, Pale Porn, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Please Help Tagging, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Ideation As Comedy, Suicidal Ideation As Drama, Trolls are Weird, Vampires, Vomiting, Weird Biology, Worldbuilding, Xenobiology, Xenophilia, Zombies, fungal zombies, porn dialogue, rails with pails, xenoanatomy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:27:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 17,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8440309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofoldAxiom/pseuds/twofoldAxiom
Summary: Your name is Karkat Vantas, and due to an error in the supplies management of the )(IS Maelstrom, you are thrust into the esteemed station of a breeder troll, with all the trauma, intrigue, and intercaste politics that entails. Your romance novels ain’t got grubshit on this.(NaNoWriMo 2016 entry)





	1. Act 1, chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE READ THIS NOTICE.
> 
> Firstly, welcome to my first NaNoWriMo project! All I've really done is plan out two scenes and a lot of headcanons, so please note that a lot of the content is going to be hastily planned and incredibly nasty, and I recommend reading the warning tags per chapter. 
> 
> DISCLAIMER: A lot of the topics will only be touched upon, but alien ideas about consent, duty to the species, and the place of fertile bodies in a species where that's actually pretty rare are going to be heavily explored. A lot of it will probably echo and intersect with IRL racism and sexism, because I'm affected by and interested in these topics, but I understand if you don't want to deal with that in your fiction, and I won't fault you for backpaging right the fuck now.
> 
> (If I'm being honest, I would sincerely advise it.)
> 
> That said, there will also be a plethora of other problematic topics not limited to _literally eating babies_ , which is the core headcanon at work here. Most of it will be warned for in the tags, but if I miss anything, I sincerely apologize and would appreciate if you posted a comment or went to my [tumblr account](http://chess-and-snickers.tumblr.com/ask) to point out what I've missed. Also, typos, but once a chapter is posted I don't plan on heavily editing it plotwise, so typos are all I ask.
> 
> Thank you for reading!
> 
> THE FOLLOWING TRIGGERS WILL BE IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> Cannibalism references  
> Aphrodisiac use  
> Fuck-or-die themes  
> Suicidal ideation, both serious and comedic

Your name is Karkat Vantas and you are facing disaster.

You’re supposed to wake up at 05:00 spacer time as part of the Day Crew on the )(IS Maelstrom, and for once you beat your alarm, so you didn’t think anything terrible was going to happen and it’s your own damn fault for forgetting that the Universe will take each and every opportunity you give it to shit on your face.

The worst part is that it had been a good few hours prior to the announcement. You’d woken up in your shallow recuperalcove, scraped off the stale sopor and got dressed, and looked at yourself in the mirror.

You took a deep breath. “I’ll make today a good one.” You told your reflection, like a fucking idiot.

You don’t even know why today of all days you decided you needed to tell yourself that. Maybe the past week was getting to you, though you were loathe to admit, or maybe you really believed it. At any rate, if you believed in curses, you would consider that the point that you’d cursed yourself. Fuck your past self and his shitty decisions. The Universe clearly set out to prove you powerless once again.

But only hours ago, you were none the wiser to this. Innocent of the misfortune about to befall you, you made your way towards the galley for breakfast, even meeting up with a couple of the trolls who’d managed to be something like friends to you, Tassit and Pomelo, despite everything you’d done to ward them off. It’s amazing what close quarters will do after a sweep or so of trying to kill each other.

You remember, vividly, talking to Pomelo while he yawned into his fist.

“I swear to the fucking _rift,_ if I get hull inspection again, I’m going to put the welder through my fucking safety harness and drift into the nearest sun.” He groused, and you snorted. “I swear! I’ll fucking do it! Whoever is in charge of crew assignment is wasting my skills on fucking _hull inspection._ I could be doing something actually useful! I could be putting my _culinary expertise_ to work!”

You rolled your eyes and thumped him on the shoulder. “Mayter, I don’t know how to break this to you, but in a moment of honestly painful, self-aware honesty, I have to tell you that you have about as much culinary expertise as I have any actual skill in programming.”

“Fuck you, Vantas, I am a _genius_ at flavor combination.”

“You made a tomato slush the last time we were at port.”

“It’s a _hangover cure._ ”

You remember Tassit elbowing you in the side and gesturing towards the entrance to the galley. You remember seeing the holonotice first, cycling slowly in the center of the massive block, with the words “SUPPLY SHORTAGE. MANDATORY HEALTH INSPECTION AT 08:00. HEAD TO YOUR NEAREST MEDBAY.” That was all it said.

You still got your breakfast, but you could barely eat it. Pomelo didn’t seem to understand why you didn’t scarf it down like usual, ribbing you about finally developing some working flavor nodes. You ignored him. Tassit stole your food but glanced sympathetically to you and to the announcement between bites. Maybe she had reason to feel a little trepidation, too.

But that was hours and a regretfully small breakfast ago. Now you’re waiting your turn outside of Deck Four Medbay Two for your inspection, and your guts haven’t been this knotted up since that time you had an allergic reaction to synthetic gin sours during Sollux’s eighth wriggling day. You’re pretty sure there’s only one reason they’d be calling a health inspection during a supply shortage,too, and the thought only makes the churning in your guts worse.

Your mind wanders. Eating post-pupation trolls isn’t really a thing _discussed_ , but you know it happens in more than just creepypasta posts and dockside rumor. You know it as surely as you know that your chances of _not_ ending up as tomorrow’s breakfast are slim to none, because even though half the crew of the Maelstrom are rejects that only made it to Ascension by being twice as clever or thrice as ruthless as anyone else in their broods, you and maybe a handful of others are what everyone else calls _grubsauce._

Your mouth is so dry you could polish diamond with your tongue.

You consider bolting.

Immediately after, you consider smacking yourself just for thinking that, because you’re in deep space, on a ship, and they would find you eventually no matter where you hid, and then you would _definitely_ be breakfast grubloaf (troll loaf?) come the next shift rollover.

The only other options you can think of are trying to fight your way out (futile, and if you managed to kill anyone before they culled you, you would only be making it easier for the rest of the crew to get some food), or killing yourself to spare you the agony of waiting (which still leads you to death, because you don’t have access to either the trash vents or the airlocks and wouldn’t be able to get to them without arousing suspicion).

All said and done, you have _one_ choice that will give you even a _sliver_ of a chance of survival and you’re still holding on like a desperate fool as the seconds tic by, which is the only thing that keeps you from bolting like a coked-out hopbeast when the extermixaminer’s assistant calls your sign and your ID number. You enter the block and feel your metaphorical hackles rise at the smell of antiseptics, moreso when you’re instructed to strip and sit on the examination platform. Fuck. You’d have felt at least _slightly_ less worried about this if she couldn’t see your gillslits. It’s not as if you were already a freak beyond redemption, that was just rubbing it in.

The extermixaminer herself is a low teal, almost jade, and one of the senior members of the crew, skin darkened with space radiation so you can’t actually tell how old she is. She practically lives here in Deck Four, and you don’t think you’ve ever seen her leave Medbay Two. You don’t even know her sign name; the sign itself is a sharp loop with a hook on one of the loose tails, which you’d never encountered back on Alternia and serves to remind you she’s old enough to have probably eaten wrigglers like you already.

Ten sweeps old but she makes you feel like three when she presses her fingers to your pulse, the points of her claws making your skin tingle even through her rubber gloves before she frowns and makes a note to the recording drone hovering over her shoulder. Your ears are ringing so hard you can’t hear her, and your fingers are shaking on the platform when she puts your hand back down and opens a nearby cabinet.

You watch her with your throat gone tourniquet tight before you muster up enough courage- or at least enough of your crabby brand of bravado- to speak to her. “If you’re going to cull me for food, at least get your fucking hands dirty.” You say, as you straighten your back and dig your nails into your knees. You perch on the very edge of the platform, and you wish your sickle wasn’t a meter away from you but if she makes a move you’ll try to find some way to get at it before she gets in a lethal blow.

Her voice is a perfectly enunciated whipcrack. “You are being presumptuous and deluded.”

You wheeze in surprise like you’ve been punched in the chest, you didn’t honestly expect her to say anything (why didn’t you?), and she doesn’t even pause as she brings out a jar of what you think is vaseline but you’re not really sure. “ _I_ am an exterm _ixaminer.”_ She says, unscrewing the cap and getting a dollop of something that looks more like congealed sopor onto her fingers. She approaches you and swabs the cool gel over your belly, where it warms fast despite the cold, sterile air. “And I am _not_ done _examining.”_

“For _what_?” You hiss, backing into the wall as she reaches for you again. “No, fuck you, I’m not letting you rub any more gunk on me until you tell me what the fuck this is about. You’re not going to kill me. Is someone else? Are you just drawing this shit out?”

She rolls her eyes and mutters. You can’t catch it, your ears are ringing again as she looks at her watch and holds up three fingers. Two. One.

“What?” You don’t get an answer. She looks up and what you get instead is a sudden _wave_ of heat, deep in your breath and in your guts and between your legs, and so intense that at first it registers as pain and you double over with a sound like you’ve been shot. She grabs you by the shoulders and forces you to straighten your back, and _then_ you realize your bulge is throbbing in its sheathe, your nook beginning to part, your breath ragged and nowhere near enough even when you gulp it in through your mouth.


	2. Act 1, chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE FOLLOWING TRIGGERS WILL BE IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> Aphrodisiac use  
> Rape/Non-con themes  
> Mild bodyhorror  
> Medical themes  
> Electroshock torture  
> Mating Cycles/Heat themes  
> Bizarre alien biology

“What the fuck,” You gasp as you feel your guts clench, and that breath is almost too much, the taste of pheromones has gotten so thick you could drown in it. The air is overwhelming with it, the antiseptic sting buried in the sensory overload, and your skin tingles with warmth, especially where she’s rubbed the gel into you.

You groan, your whole body tense as you fight the chemically-induced haze, trying to find enough spongematter in your pan to together in a coherent sentence that isn’t an obscenely literal variant of “ _Fuck me_.”

“What the fuck did you do to me?” You say, all in the rush of a single breath that you need back almost immediately. Sweat trickles down the side of your face and the extermixaminer doesn’t seem concerned in the slightest as she looks dispassionately over you writhing and whimpering on the platform, takes first one hand and then the other to a pair of shackles on the edge that you hadn’t noticed, like a criminal, like an _animal_ . Her hands spreading your thighs feel like ice, and you simultaneously want her to get away and go higher; coax your bulge out of your aching sheathe, press her long fingers deep into your nook regardless of those dagger claws. Imagining the feeling alone is _killing_ you.

You can’t tell if it’s terror or want anymore; you hardly know up from down or if you’re afraid of death or afraid of how good it feels. Your eyes flit from corner to corner. You drool.

“Drone pheromones used to stimulate egg production in the mothergrub.” She tells you, though her voice registers to you like it’s somewhere impossibly far away and you’re a little amazed you manage to understand any of it. At the same time it doesn’t make any _sense_ . You’re hyper-aware of your surroundings, yet only of every point of contact. Your own body registers entirely as a pulsating agony of overloaded senses and blood-deep need that you can’t even touch yourself to relieve. You’re _so fucking horny_ , basically, that you don’t understand how anyone could be talking about the _least_ attractive part of troll reproduction right just now.

You growl as she digs her elbow into your inner thigh to free up her hands, your hips rolling against empty air, and then you suck in a breath and bear down  like an eager whore on something cold and smooth. She carefully twists it into your nook, deeper, deeper still.

You groan, “Oh, _fuck,_ ”

A bored chuckle. “At least you are being cooperative _now_.”

You feel a _literal_ shock. The sting chases away some of the artificial lust and now there’s nothing desireable about this thing, the cold metal too thin, too straight, too _deep_ . You can feel where it presses unnaturally into the bends of your nook, biting into the walls, but you can’t do anything about that but ball your fingers into fists and _hiss_ when she pushes it another inch deeper before it bottoms out against the entrance to your genebladder, heavy and alien inside of you. It’s blunt, but that doesn’t make you feel much better about not knowing what it is, why she’s fucking you open with it. It’s certainly not to get you off.

She at least stops digging her elbow into your thigh, but she takes longer straps, more forgiving than the shackles but just as immovable, and binds you to the platform by your knees and ankles. Panic curls in the back of your throat like vomit, like a scream, and you want to curl up into yourself like you’ve see grubs do, want to yank whatever instrument this is out of your nook and throw it in her face. You want out of the cuffs and out of this daymare medical procedure. You want to sleep for a sweep and never complain about hull inspection duty again. You want her to fuck you within an inch of your life.

You want _relief_.

But right now all you can do is make desperate noises and watch, trembling, willing yourself to breathe slowly as she peers at a screen and adjusts some knobs on a nearby machine. You realize it’s hooked up to whatever she put inside you; the higher she turns the dial, the more it seems to buzz. Pops of static thrum and skitter across nerves in places you never thought electricity could _go_.

It makes you squirm and flush darker with forced, probably _incidental_ arousal, and you know the _fucking extermixaminer_ isn’t getting anything out of this but that doesn’t stop the pressure from building with nowhere to vent, and you’re desperate, you’re keening in the back of your throat, trilling, begging _anyone within earshot_ to get you off or you swear you’re going to explode. Your legs are twitching from the pain and it still registers as _more please I need this_ even if you understand that if she does what you want her to then you will _burn._

(It almost seems the better option than this.)

The extermixaminer keeps her eyes on the screen while you steadily break down, and it’s so _impersona_ l, it’s so cold and sterile and _rote._ You’re dying nerve by nerve as she does her job, your bulge receded fully into your sheathe despite how swollen it is. It kind of itches at the rim of your sheathe, which only adds to how much you want to get out your hands free and do _something_ to relieve all this.

Your mind is starting to unravel from the rest of you. You don’t sob, but you realize, almost as though you were the torturing a troll you don’t care about, that there are tears running from the corners of your eyes, slowly, more pain response than anything else. The hum of the machine is audible, a fluorescent light buzz, and the extermixaminer tics the voltage up again, again, _again, fuck, it’s too much._ Your whole body spasms with it. Starbursts pop in your vision as you lose what tenuous control you had of your limbs and your voice, though it doesn’t come out right; it doesn’t sound like a troll screaming. You’re poised at your breaking point, poised at the precipice of what you can take without shattering and begging to be allowed to come the fuck apart already.

It’s a very intimate and very unpleasant insight into the differences between waves of electrocution and an actual orgasm.

You realize the pain is ebbing, but you’re still wound so tight that it hardly matters. You’re shaking and wet- tears, sweat, prefluids, drool- but you haven’t cum. Your throat feels like it’s ripped to shreds from your garbled attempts at screaming, and when you swallow thickly it hurts. You look down.

The extermixaminer reaches over and twists the handle of the electrode thing jammed up your nook, making you whimper like a wriggler as it scrapes against your inflamed insides a bit before she starts drawing it out. It’s at once _one_ kind of relief and not, because now your nook can really tell you just how bent out of shape it had been the entire time you were flipping your shit, the walls sliding back into place and pressing into the indents the electrode left.

You gasp as it finally exits your body. A lump of something translucent besides a blurry white core and the red streaks of blood and slime, sticks to the end of the electrode. She scrapes it into a phial and stoppers the end, labelling it with a strip of tape and a scrawl. You tug at the shackles again, bite your lip so you don’t say anything that will make this worse than it already is, but you still want so badly that it burns almost as much as the hot, unforgiving memory of electricity in your skin.

She unshackles and unties you without fanfare. You rub your wrists and finally close your legs with a groan. Your hips are sore, your shoulders ache, everything is drawn thin and worn bloated, and you desperately need a pail. The pheromone smell still sticks in your nose and the back of your throat.

“How long was...” You croak. You have enough shame left to scrub at your sticky face and avoid her eyes and change the subject. “What the fuck was that? What did you pull out of me?”

“About five minutes,” She says, not looking at you more because she’s already gesturing towards her assistant to bring the next examinee in while she puts the phial in a tray of similar ones. “And I pulled out an egg, for testing.” When you stare at her in confusion she rolls her eyes. “We are short on supplies and eggs make good food. Now get dressed and get out. I am not an informations desk and the ship does not stand still just because you do not know shit.”

You can hardly believe it. Trolls don’t lay eggs anymore, that’s what all the schoolfeeds said growing up. But you move on autopilot, cringing all the while from the pain now starting to burn between your legs, pain that at least helps cool your libido enough that you won’t embarrass yourself when you pull your uniform back on.

You see two other color-stained blobs in that tray, two other _eggs,_ from two other _trolls_ , and you shudder. The world doesn’t feel real. You don’t feel real.

But you stumble out of that daymare and limp your way to the assignment center, get yourself assigned maintenance to the filtration turbines on Deck Seven and put your back into the surprisingly arduous work. You chafe and ache in several places, not all related to what you’re doing at the moment, but it helps, it helps, it grounds you.

At any rate, it’s while you’re there scrubbing waste gunk out from between the blades of turbine five that you let yourself piece together three things:

Firstly, that you’re not going to be eaten.

Secondly, that you’re not going to starve anyway.

And while you don’t want to think about it, thirdly, that you laid a fucking egg.


	3. Act 1, chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late, but with time to spare. Sorry about that! I'll try to do Chapter Four faster.  
> Special thanks to [Syntax](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Syntax) for motivating me this time around and providing Lebouf's sign name and the character Ripann Tairre, and [Rainekitty](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Rainekitty) for the last-minute betas and trigger check. Also special thanks to [ValorousOwl](http://valorousowl.tumblr.com) for Claris' name, [Essynkardi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Essynkardi) for shenanigans.
> 
> THE FOLLOWING TRIGGERS WILL BE IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> Allusion to cannibalism  
> Vore themes  
> Objectification/Fetishization

The Maelstrom is a pretty big ship, at least as far as your limited experience with ships goes, so you assume that’s why despite having more than the one medbay you went to, it takes until you’ve finished lunch (the usual, grubmeal reconstituted and reshaped into simulacra of real food) before you get any more info about what the fuck had gone on back there in Medbay Two.

That is, you put away your tray and head out of the mess and stop at the assignment center to find out what you’ll be doing until it’s time for dinner, but instead of getting the rest of the day’s work from an assignment terminal, the line stops with a crackle from the intercoms.

“Attention all crewtrolls aboard the )(IS Maelstrom, testing results from the earlier medical examinations have been processed. To preface the rest of this announcement, we are short on supplies. The severity of this shortage predicts that the current rations won’t last for longer than another week. Despite their incompetence, we cannot simply cull and eat the offending mismanagers due to their otherwise impeccable contributions to the welfare of the ship.”

The voice laughs in a way that makes it sound like it’s patting itself on the ass for a good joke, but just makes you want to punch the speaker in the throat.You’re pretty sure this speaker is the idiot at fault for the shortage. Your fingers tighten on the terminal as you listen. The voice on the intercom goes on.

“We have sent a request back to the Imperial core for extra supplies, but those will likely take another two to three weeks at  _ best _ to reach the next checkpoint. Thus, we will have to make do with the natural talents of those on this ship.”

The world feels like it’s slowing down. Paper rustles on the other end of the line.

“We are very lucky to have not one but  _ four _ viable breeders on this crew. To save time, if you hear your name, please stop whatever you’re doing and head to Deck Three, Medbay One. Beginning alphabetically by sign,”

You don’t register the first name, but you hold your breath and think of the extermixaminer’s cold hands. It’s inevitable, really; you think on the steel rod, the spasming, the wet lump she’d pulled out of you. You try to steel yourself or make peace in the few seconds you have.

“Vantas, Karkat.”

You still reel back from the terminal as if you’d been told that it was pumping out noxious gas. Staggering, you bump into Tassit behind you. She catches you by the shoulders while you hyperventilate. Pomelo shuffles awkwardly in the line behind her.

“Shit.” He chuckles, and you look at him wide-eyed and livid.

“What the fuck is so funny, Mayter?” You hiss, bristling, as you pull away from Tassit to let her at the front of the line. Pomelo pulls out of the line with you, and Tassit glances over her shoulder at both of you in that pitying way she does as if she’s pale for the whole world. It makes you kind of sick.

You turn your attention back to Pomelo, who’s already starting to walk. “You heard that, right? You heard that as loudly and clearly as I did? I’m not coming off as completely fucking shithive right now?”

He curls his upper lip, glancing to the side. “Well, I mean, you  _ are _ , but probably not for the reasons you’re expecting. Just take a deep breath and calm down. I got called too, we can make this a thing we both do.”

“Oh,  _ fuck you _ , and stop trying to pacify me, you’re not my moirail.” You do take a deep breath, though, because you’re getting dizzy; you can’t seem to get enough air right just now, and it’s not going to help you any if you faint in the middle of the assignment center. You exhale. “Can you at least tell me what the grubshitting  _ fuck _ is going on?”

He shrugs. “I figured it was pretty evident. You  _ do _ know what breeder trolls are, right?”

Your look of confused dismay seems to be answer enough. He chuckles lowly. “Just look at it this way: Considering you’re  _ still _ hemoanon even now that you’re in the fleet, being a breeder is an  _ improvement _ to your social situation.”

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel much better.”  But you go along with him at this point, because the curiosity is starting to outweigh your fear. You didn’t get this far in life being more curious than cautious, but Pomelo’s hand on your shoulder as you both walk to the lift at least steels you enough that you can think about what you’re doing. 

Mostly that if you  _ don’t _ , you’re entirely certain that something awful will happen. Maybe you won’t get eaten, but  _ something _ .

You’re paranoid. It’s a serious problem.

But  _ while _ you think about that serious problem, your feet continue to move, and Pomelo continues to chatter. It’s like waking up from a half-dreamt schoolfeeding session when, as Pomelo claps you between the shoulderblades, it dawns on you that he’s stopped talking and you’re in front of the door to Medbay One.

You look at him. He must understand the sheer depth of bewildered despair on your face, for once, because he doesn’t try to comfort you. He makes an uncomfortable noise in the back of his throat instead, smiling in a way that comes off as at once cautiously optimistic and deeply apprehensive. Maybe your pessimism is getting to him.

“Here we go.” He says, but before he can press the button that opens the door, it slides out of the way on its own with a hiss of pressurized, sterile air. There’s a troll on the other side, an imposing  _ wall _ of a blueblood standing taller than even the tips of Pomelo’s horns.

You recognize her by her sign (vaguely shaped like a troll running at a slant or doing some really emotive jazzhands) as Chief Offensive Strategistrator Claris Lebouf. You and Pomelo immediately snap to attention, and the world goes into crystal-sharp clarity: The smell of her pomade and sweat, and a faintly suggestive  _ squish _ as she adjusts her uniform. You think you probably shouldn’t take notice of that while she’s yelling over her shoulder at someone.

“And when all this is over, you can suck my dead lusus’  _ bulge!” _ Her voice thunders over your head and you’re pretty sure you can see at least one mediculler cowering where she isn’t even facing. Another voice cackles from inside and Strategistrator Lebouf huffs one more time before turning her head and finally noticing you and Pomelo.

Somehow you don’t flinch at her looking you up and down. You feel a little  _ exposed _ , though, because your traitorous bulge was awakened by the terror of her, not unlike a drone response. You don’t dare look down as she looks at the crotch of your uniform. You also try to stifle your self-hatred enough not to make it worse, because it’s getting a little embarrassing how easily riled you are today.

She sniffs. “You don’t look injured and your patches say Deck Nine. You two the last couple of breeders?” 

You nod. She smiles, rows of serrated teeth gleaming at you. (It doesn’t look friendly.) “Bit young, but definitely no pupa. Fucking  _ grubsauce _ color, though. You’re  _ all kinds _ of lucky, ending up here instead of in my snack rations.” She chuckles, almost to herself.

She leans in  _ way _ too close, and you have to resist the urge to snap your teeth at her, or lean away, or butt her with your horns. “I’ll try and give you a spin after I have a little time to cool down. You’ll probably be a better pail than fucking  _ Tairre _ back there.”

She snarls, presumably in Tairre’s direction. You’re about to  _ politely _ (if tersely) ask her to move, but then she turns back to you and you choke. “Never tried red like this before, though.  _ Imperial _ red. That’s something special, wonder how it’ll  _ taste. _ ”

You gulp. 

You tell yourself you could snap your head forward and knock out her teeth. It would be  _ statistically terrible _ for your generally tenuous survival, but that doesn’t make it a less attractive fantasy. You thought you were  _ over _ the whole threat-of-being-eaten thing, and the way she says it is just curious enough that you can’t tell if she’s kidding or legitimately wants a bite out of you.

But she straightens and runs a hand through her hair, tugging on it to keep the spikes up. 

“Alright, we all have jobs to do. Sorry for holding you up.” She says. She tips an invisible hat, pushes past you and still-dumbstruck Pomelo, and hums a jaunty tune you vaguely recognize as she saunters off to wherever the fuck.

“What the  _ fuck _ was that?” Pomelo asks you. It’s your turn to make a dumb noise and shrug.

The door has also closed again, so this time you push the button and the both of you enter Medbay One. 

You can kind of tell why the door was pressurized. Even with the obvious hum of the atmospheric purifiers working overtime, the place  _ reeks _ of sex. You’re pretty sure it hasn’t been that long since the announcement either. 

The medicine and blood smells you usually associate with medbays is almost entirely absent due to the purifiers. Besides the lack of cheap perfume and cheaper incense, it smells almost like a  _ brothel. _

You’re very thankful they at least have the decency to make it so you have no idea  _ where _ the smell is coming from. The most likely freshly-fucked Tairre is nowhere in sight.

“Mayter and Vantas?” A familiar voice and a familiar face come in from the side. Kanaya looks up at you from a clipboard, her expression going surprised and then unreadable. Her skin glows faintly. You stare, and she stares back.

You didn’t even know she was  _ on  _ this ship.


	4. Act 1, chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Due to today's power outage and a few other circumstances, this chapter is unbeta'd, but at least I got it written pretty quickly! I even got a little started on the next already.
> 
> Due to the unbeta'd nature of this chapter as well, please comment or [send me an ask](http://chess-and-snickers.tumblr.com/ask) if you spot any problems or other triggers!
> 
> THE FOLLOWING TRIGGERS WILL BE IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> Dubious consent

“... Mayter and  _ Vantas _ ?” She tries again, glancing between you and Pomelo. Pomelo coughs into his fist and you snap out of it.

“Fuck.” You shake your head like you’re shaking off dust. Looking around, you’re thankful the other medicullers and extermixaminers are busy doing their jobs. Then you turn to Kanaya, who tilts her head and waves a hand as if to prompt you to say something because she doesn’t know what to say herself.

“... Vantas, reporting.” You gulp, and finally whatever had been silencing you the past few hours breaks and you feel the words rushing in as you cross your arms and try to look grave.

“Before I actually  _ do _ anything, though, I am sick and  _ fucking _ tired of being yanked around today without having any idea what this whole  _ breeder troll _ thing is about, and all I vaguely understand about it is that it involves our food situation and  _ troll eggs _ . Some of which I assume will be coming out of me! So I think a little explanation is fucking warranted here!”

Kanaya remains eerily silent and blinks very slowly, almost sleepily, except her eyes are dark and wide. Something in the back of your mind is reminded of a purrbeast about to pounce, except nothing in her posture suggests an attack. You continue, taking a couple steps closer to her. You’re suddenly  _ livid. _

“I mean  _ just _ five hours ago, I was shocked in the nook until I  _ laid a goddamn egg _ and it seems to me that this is going to be a somewhat regular occurrence until we get those emergency supplies! Presumably because we’re going to be  _ eating _ my disgusting crotchfruit, which is quite possibly the  _ least _ awful thing I could think of it being used for!” She nods and maybe you flail a bit, before continuing. Not yelling, not yet, but there’s a sharp, clattering quality to your voice that even you can take notice of. “Also, Pomelo and a couple others are going to be involved? And this is supposed to be a thing that  _ improves _ my station in life? I don’t fucking know! But I’m not mentally or emotionally fortified enough to have any more surprises thrown at me right now, especially with regards to my body and the mysterious functions thereof, so lay it on me, Kanaya! I am  _ entirely _ present for the schoolfeeding about to commence!”

She laughs (snorts, snickers) behind her hand. You scowl at her and she stops, but her lips are still quirked up in amusement (presumably at your misfortune.) 

“I’m a little sorry that you had to go through that without knowing what was happening, but I suppose circumstances are just unique enough that it would be kind of weird to talk about it.” He scratches behind one ear and glances towards a sealed door to your left. “You at least seem to know the basics, so I won’t bore you with that. Specifics, then.” She sort of winces with her smile. 

“Well, first of all it  _ is _ a social boost. Think of it as a promotion, to a very important and kind of rare and ephemeral position. We only need breeders at times like this, so don’t worry about being a surrogate mothergrub or anything; we aren’t exactly equipped to be an Imperial Colonizer.” You hadn’t even considered that  _ possible  _ (though a lot has happened today that has pushed that particular textparcel) and you suppress a slight shudder at the thought. 

She continues. “You’ll be removed from most of your regular duties, if not all of them. You’ll primarily remain here, in fact, as we facilitate your…”

“Egg-laying?” Pomelo offers.

“Whoring?” You offer, more bitterly.

“I wasn't going to say ether of those things.” She shakes her head. You open your mouth, but she continues. “I'm sorry for explaining poorly. At any rate, we’re very much dawdling here, in the middle of the block, and you need to start the hormone treatments if we're going to meet the dietary needs of a whole Sentinel.”

_ That _ , out of everything, makes you dig your heels in. Pomelo, for once in this entire exchange, makes appropriately queasy noises.

“Hormone treatments.” You repeat, licking across your upper teeth (less protruding now in adulthood, but still) as she turns toward the door to your left. It looks suddenly forbidding, despite being identical to every other door in every other medbay. You sound calmer than you are. “The same Hell jelly that I had smeared all over me a while ago, right?”

“Well… that, slurry, troll pheromones...” She's the one who looks dismayed now, like she really hates explaining this part. “And jade slime.” 

You blink.

“Meaning?”

She sighs, and says behind one hand, “Blood. Processed and enriched in a rainbowdrinker’s gastric chamber.”

Pomelo pretty audibly gags behind you. You only barely resist the same reaction.

“I know it really sounds like  _ bullshit _ , as you might put it-”

“That is exactly how I was about to put it!”

“-but you have to believe me when I tell you that this is completely necessary for the growth of your eggs, and if there were a less messy and frankly disturbing way of doing this, we probably wouldn't bother.”

You sway weakly where you stand. Your vision is greyed at the edges, losing focus, like when you’d let Kanaya drink a couple quarts of your blood the day before her Ascension as a goodbye present. Knowing what that blood was probably used for makes your insides churn.

“I'm  _ trying  _ to make this go as smoothly as I can,” She says. “So, I suppose it's still gross and weird, but at least I told you  _ before  _ getting ready to puke in your mouth?”

“Thanks, I think. This is still going to haunt me for the rest of my life, however long that may be, but at least you're not telling me to shit glitter and cupcakes with joy about it,  _ unlike some people _ .” You shake your head and cover your mouth, forcing yourself not to throw up then and there. “Small comfort, but appreciated.”

Kanaya smiles weakly. “You're incredibly resilient, you know.” She says. Your gut heaves like a boat in a storm, but you hold, and she gestures to the door. “Anyway, we  _ really  _ aren't doing ourselves any favors here. The faster we do this, the faster it's over.”

“I really fucking hate that you're right.” You grouse, and with Pomelo trailing behind you (you glare over your shoulder to make sure he doesn't ditch; you doubt he'd dare, but your paranoia wants to make sure you're both equally screwed over), you follow Kanaya through the door.

It reeks  _ even worse  _ in here.

You have no doubts that the trolls in charge are keeping this block as sterile as possible, because you're sprayed down with some kind of antiseptic  _ and  _ have to get in a magneticleanse chamber upon entry, but either the pheromone gel from earlier was waiting to surprise you like a bad head cold or it’s just that saturated in here. Despite the pale walls and the lack of crowding, it feels stifling. You tug on your collar but are careful not to catch the seam.

The little jadeblood operating the chamber taps on the glass. You don't think you've ever seen this many jadebloods in one waking cycle before, let alone within a few hours of each other. You step out for Pomelo to get his turn.

“Breeders or donors?” She asks, looking up at you. It takes you a second to realize she's actually talking to  _ you. _

“... Breeders.” You say. She smiles, and  _ this  _ one is friendly, if crooked.

“It looks like you’ve heard all the grisly details already. And hey, thanks. You're all doing us a massive favor.” There's an incongruous and weirdly sincere respect in that. You shift your weight from foot to foot before Kanaya finally takes you by the arm and starts tugging you towards  _ another  _ door.

You look back. The jade who just spoke to you is shorter than you are, but bustles Pomelo away with a professional brusqueness and a decidedly unprofessional remark about his haircut. Pomelo laughs nervously before you enter the last door.

You face Kanaya and she starts undoing your uniform. You back up into the door with a thud.

“Scared?” She asks, in a way that actually suggests she would stop what she was doing if you were.

“No,” You answer anyway, and because she was doing it, you undo your uniform yourself and hope she doesn't notice the slight stain at the crotch as you peel it down your legs. Damn your bulge. “Just surprised.”

You glance around the bare little block, really a  _ block _ , with completely even walls. The only things in it are the two of you, a low foldable cot (the sheets are shiny, you notice; probably fluid repellant), an inflatable field recuperalcove, and a couple shelves of medicine, antiseptics, and probably enough sedatives to kill a skywhale. 

You look back to her. “Did this used to be a provisions armory?”

“Technically, it still is.” She says, tiptoeing to fetch a jar off a shelf. “But for the duration of your breeding duties, it's both your personal respiteblock and your office.”

“You mean my boudoir.” You say, jokingly, but the realization that it  _ really  _ isn't a joke, that you're really doing this, that you can't escape this (that you shouldn't even  _ want  _ to) hits you like a shuttlebug on a busy road. Your throat closes tight around your laugh.

“If you want to put it that way.” Kanaya says, gesturing to the cot. She adds, trying to be comforting, “It'll be easier if you lie down. This is a lot stronger than the test dosage.”

“As long as I'm not getting tied down and electrocuted, it can't possibly be that horrible.” You say, but you eye the jar suspiciously as you sit on the cot. The sheeting is unarousingly cold against your ass.

Probably not for long.

Someone knocks, actually  _ knocks _ , as if your privacy is something to give a shit about. The surreality of it all floors you somewhat. Kanaya holds up the jar and smears some of the contents onto her hand. There's a little more in that handful than was used on you earlier.

“Ready?” She asks.

“Not in the least.” You reply. You look to the door. “Do it anyway.”


	5. Act  1, chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize both for the amount of time this took and the place it ended. I really, honestly, had so much trouble with this chapter it's not even funny, mostly because I got a bad infection. I'll spare you the gory details, but apparently it was enough to throw off my writing?
> 
> Will try to do better the rest of the month, and extend into December if I must. I really want to finish this story, so wish me luck!
> 
> THE FOLLOWING TRIGGERS WILL BE IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> This is it, this is the vomit chapter.  
> This is the chapter where Kanaya pukes into Karkat's mouth, like I've been talking about to over Skype and Discord for the past couple of weeks.  
> Besides that and aphrodisiacs, not much else?  
> It's not even that long and nasty a segment about vomit. It's just a thing. It happened and I'm vaguely disappointed that I couldn't make it weirder. Oh well, later chapters maybe.

Kanaya wasn’t kidding about the dose being stronger. The effect hits you almost as soon as she touches you.

You don't gasp at the sudden heat when she spreads her palm across your belly, but you do arch up against the touch this time around. Kanaya always kept her claws short and dainty on Alternia, and you can't even feel the suggestion of them through her gloves when she curls her fingers for a second as she lifts her hand. It's a little weird to be thinking about that detail as her hand smears the gel in a widening spiral on your skin.

“ _ Fuck, _ ” You hiss, clutching the frame of the cot as you feel your body light up hotter than daybreak. “Fuck, fuck,  _ fuck, _ I was  _ prepared _ for it this time,  _ fuck _ , God, I’m going to die; I’m dying, ahh,  _ fuck-! _ ”

“Shh, shh, it’s fine.” You feel her clean hand against your cheek, thumb stroking the corner of your mouth, and you moan pathetically. She takes the opportunity to get more gel on her other hand and push a couple fingers into your mouth, rubbing the pads into your tongue.

You keen like a wriggler, but it _does_ stop you from continuing, if only because now the _idea_ of moving your tongue would be too much to handle. She thrusts her fingers into your mouth a couple times with the tips of them gagging you when she pushes too far, and your mouth fills with spit and the taste of rubber as oddly enough your bulge slides partway out of you.

“Sorry.” She says, from miles away it seems, as she withdraws and you try to chase after her touch without being really in control of it, sucking softly as you curl your tongue under the pads of her fingers. Your mouth tingles from the residue and the smell of pheromones gets slightly stronger, this time not your own.

Another knock on the door, louder and more insistent. “Not to interrupt a tender moment or whatever in there, but you know we don’t all have the luxury of a long break right now, right?” Says the voice on the other side. It doesn’t quite jar you out of the haze you’re in, but the prospect of another troll who’s actually there to fuck you shoots straight to your needy nook and makes you trill hungrily. 

Kanaya doesn’t say anything to them. She awkwardly pats your pale, tense knuckles before feeding you a little more of the pheromone gel, though it’s not so much feeding you as pushing her fingers into your mouth while you suck the stuff down like you need it more than air. She probably shouldn’t have reminded you that you have hands, because when she tries to pull away this time you grab her by the wrist.

For a little while, you just relish the contact, even though it’s not the kind of contact you want. The taste of rubber has mostly faded by now, all you can really taste is the spicy-bitter pheromones and your own spit; it’s not pleasant, but you can’t get enough all the same. Your bulge stripes wetly against your thigh, leaving warm, rapidly-cooling trails of slime on your skin.

“Sorry.” She says again, and almost too easily peels your fingers away. The wet, sucking sound of your lips leaving the rubber is downright obscene and makes your whole body  _ throb _ , and when you try to say something it comes out as another garbled, needy trill. 

She pushes you down on the cot and you think  _ yes, finally, please _ as you feel the plastic sheeting against your back. She doesn’t straddle you or anything, doesn’t hike up the skirt of her robelike scrubs; you don’t even get any skin-on-skin contact, yet, just the coolness of her breath on your fevered face. It still manages to be somehow intoxicating when she cradles your chin in one hand and kisses you.

You purr warmly. Her lips are sticky with what you think is lipstick, though you can’t taste it with the way she’s got your mouths pressed so tightly together. Her free hand drifts down your chest and down your belly. You know where it’s going on some level enough that you raise your hips to meet her and whine when she lets your bulge curl around her wrist. You’re not the biggest in that department by a long shot , but she’s fine-boned enough that she feels almost fragile where you’ve wrapped around her.

You know better, of course; but that’s not exactly on your mind when she angles her hand down, and you gasp as she buries two fingers into your nook. They’re long and slender and the two of them together have just enough girth to make you writhe as she curls them into the spot behind your bulge. You’re  _ very _ thankful she keeps her claws short, and even more thankful that she carefully moves with the bends in your nook, gentle and slow and making you grind down for whatever more you can get.

You moan as she sucks softly at your mouth. Her tongue pushes past your teeth and her grip on your chin goes just a touch tighter before you feel something begin to trickle in along your tongue. It’s thin, cool fluid at first; mostly flavorless and maybe kind of mineral if it has even that much of a taste. You’re more interested in her fingers starting to twist and thrust into your nook, the heady noises of her fingering you as your bulge tangles with her thumb.

Then you hear her gag, before a rush of thicker fluid hits you in the back of the throat.

It’s just as cool as the rest of her, almost cold to someone like you, but where whatever it was from earlier was just water, this is more like some kind of Hellish jello shot. It tastes something like pineapple glaze and way too much iron, and knowing what it is... 

Well, it  _ should _ be the world’s biggest turn-off, but somehow it isn’t. You gulp it down hungrily, thankful you can’t smell it while she’s got her mouth sealed so tightly on yours, and you even start to enjoy it, even start to beg for more with your tongue and the faint, needy chirrs you can get between gulping. She even stops holding your jaw open when you make it clear that you’re not going to pull away, cradling your head in her palm while she fingerfucks you harder. You wish you could give her more but all you can do is lie there and take it; and mother _ fucking _ take it you do, with enthusiasm that borders on desperation.

You hear the hiss of the door as whoever was outside seems to have lost their patience. They make a startled, and you think,  _ aroused _ kind of sputter; the trollish sex pheromones in the cramped little enclosure spike up just a tic more and you’re pretty sure you’re losing your mind. 

Kanaya stops kissing you, stops pouring the contents of her gastric sac down your throat while you whine from the loss. You’re dizzy with arousal and lack of air, the former of which only gets worse as you breathe hard and get more pheromones for your trouble, but you stay on the platform while she keeps her fingers slowly, almost lazily, curling in your nook. It’s driving you up the wall, and you were halfway to the ceiling already.

She tells the new troll something you can’t be assed to pay attention to before her fingers finally leave you, and you almost want to _ scream _ for her to come back, until oh, someone’s hands are on your hips, someone’s settling their weight between your legs. Your bulge curls again, anticipating, as one of those hands holds it out of the way and you look up into a smiling, impish face.

“Don’t say anything,” You say, you  _ demand _ , before you’ve even fully registered what he looks like or the quirk of his mouth around an introduction. “Just shut the fuck up and  _ fuck me. _ ”

“I guess we’re both a little impatient!” He says, before you feel the slightly cool length of his bulge across your nook, too slow to be what you want but so good all the same. He’s a fucking tease apparently, because instead of putting it in like a reasonable troll now that he has you in his clutches, even after all that bitching he did about having a short break, he keeps doing  _ that _ . You almost want to cry.

You claw his arms instead. It’s a pointless gesture, your claws couldn’t even cut thread, but it’s the kind of stimulation that makes him moan.

“God, you’re so  _ hot. _ ” He purrs, rubbing a little more insistently. “Never done it with a mutant before, I didn’t think  _ anyone _ ran this warm.”

“Fuck you.” You say. “ _ Fuck me. _ ” You beg. “ _ Please. _ ”

He chuckles like an asshole, pinches your gills in wonderment, and you wonder if he’s ever going to actually get on with it when  _ like an asshole _ he rolls his hips forward and his bulge finally starts pushing into you.

And  _ into you _ .

Holy  _ shit  _ he has a lot of bulge.


	6. Act 1, chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I continue to be really bad at updating daily. Hopefully this has just been a slumpy week.  
> This one also wasn't beta'd, because I just really don't want to go over it a second time right this minute lmao.  
> ALSO If you got an update e-mail for [space cowboy disaster zone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8265034/chapters/19623823) for a chapter that doesn't exist, that's my fault for posting to the wrong fic. Whoops!
> 
> THE FOLLOWING TRIGGERS WILL BE IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> Idk, porn dialogue?  
> Probably some dubious consent themes.  
> Some fetishization/objectification

This is honestly a lot more bulge than anyone should be expected to take, god _ damnit. _

“A real trooper, aren't you?” He asks. His bulge does a languid roll against your shameglobes that makes your eyes water when he burrows another couple inches deeper. He seems less than concerned with your comfort, though; maybe he’s even taking some sadistic pleasure in the way you writhe on his bulge, the way your nook spreads obscenely, achingly tight.

It’s not enough, though. He rolls his hips more insistently and you groan, while some idiot, panfucked part of you that still hasn’t caught the memo that you’re at the point a reasonable troll would  _ stop _ begs for more. You arch your back to make it easier for him, digging your claws into his hips as he growls and complies; he leans over you, all of him slightly cool against your skin, mouthing at your shoulder in a way you could almost pretend was flush. 

“Am I the first lucky troll to get in on this?” He murmurs against your skin, points of his fangs scraping just enough to make you wish he’d bite. “Mutantblood like you, you’d be culled if you contributed back on the homeworld.”

Another roll forward and you feel his hips pressed up into yours. Your bulge is trapped between the two of you and you can't help but try to grind into him, try to get a little more friction as the leftover pheromone gel ramps the sensitivity up to the very edge of pain. You find yourself panting from just how  _ full _ you are, and he’s barely even done any real moving yet. He strokes your hair, strokes the base of your horns and makes you whine for him. His fingers dig into the membranes at the base in a way that leaves you gasping, mouth open, canting your hips in just the right way so he presses right into your shameglobes. Your bulge leaks a little material from the pressure, blood-hot fluid pooling between you.

He leaves hickies on your neck as he makes his way up to your ear, slow undulations of his hips and faint curls of his bulge driving you even crazier, even more desperate for it. “And you’re so eager, too; I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone want my bulge this bad. God, it’s so fucking hot, thinking I could be someone’s first at this age.”

The porn dialogue is objectively stupid, but you don’t mind all that much. You would play up the needy ingenue angle if only because it  _ might _ make him fuck you properly already if you could. You’re genuinely gagging for it at this point and you’re about to fucking  _ beg _ , but that’s the furthest thing from your mind when he actually  _ does _ bite you and ruin your earlier evaluation.

“ _ Damn you, _ ” You growl, though it comes out more like a desperate mewl while you smack him in the side. You’re a little amazed you can say anything. “Fuck me already, I don’t  _ care _ ; I don’t care about  _ any _ of the drivel you’re spouting, I just want you to  _ move _ . Or do you just not fucking know how to use your own damn bulge, you vile sack of lusus shit?”

He looks surprised by that. There’s blood on his teeth, and the sight of it paired with the sting in your shoulder stirs hotly in your gut. You bare your own teeth and get right up in his face. “Did you just want to get your bulge warm? Because if you’re not going to fuck me properly, I’m going to kick you out of here and fuck  _ myself _ like a sensible troll.” 

You feel his bulge ripple and it cuts you off for a moment as you gasp, your eyes rolling up slightly as it pushes itself into places you didn’t know were even there, but that’s good, that’s what you were hoping for. You grin and grab him by one of his horns, force him to look you in the eye as you plant your feet on the cot as much as you can and bear down on him.

“So are you going to keep being a wriggler or are you going to be a  _ troll _ and  _ fuck me already _ ?”

He crashes his lips into yours. You moan into his mouth and his tongue finds yours, tangling them rather than throatfucking you like Kanaya did. He doesn’t have the length for that here, but you don’t care as he starts moving properly, his hands on either side of your head, clutching at the plasticky sheets. 

God, but it  _ hurts _ . He’s too big and too forceful about it, but it’s exactly what you need and you’re not shy about letting him know. You squeeze your thighs around his hips and kiss him harder. You claw down his back and clutch at his hair and every sound you make is a primal affirmation of how much you’re loving it. He trills back into your mouth as he fucks you into the cot until you can barely breathe. 

You break the kiss first with a sharp, high noise building in your throat. You can feel it like electricity humming under your skin, not unlike a few hours ago, but instead of centering between your legs it’s spread out all the way to the bases of your horns. You grit your teeth as it mounts and mounts until your whole body tenses up and the pressure snaps in the pit of your belly, a loosening, shuddering rush as if on some level  _ you _ are unravelling, thread by thread. Your nook clenches in short, arrhythmic stutters, tight enough that it makes the nameless troll above you tremble and swear and moan.

You  _ really _ don’t give a shit about how he’s doing just then, as his bulge does a slow  _ wave _ inside you. You arch up off the cot, moaning like you’re getting paid to do it, and your own bulge spurts all over your middle and probably some of your chest. You can feel his bulge still squirming inside you, pressing into your shameglobes and making your orgasm drag on that much longer; moreso when you feel his bulge pouring genetic material into you, and you groan at the thought. Your face is practically on fire.

His hips still grind into yours like he’s trying to melt into you by pressure alone. You’re pretty sure your bulge has receded back into its sheathe by the time he stops doing that and pulls out of you, and when you look down you’re a  _ mess _ of smeared genetic material. If that orgasm hadn’t knocked the wind out of you, the sight of all that red would definitely finish the job. You gulp, your mouth dry and faintly bitter now.

“Whew. Let’s hope that does the trick!” He says, still gratingly chipper, as he eases himself off the cot with a wince, the movement jostling the shaky platform just a little. You can feel his genetic material  _ sloshing _ in your genebladder, and the thought of what it’s doing there sends a chill through your bones all over again. He seems to notice you getting pensive because he sort of awkwardly finds some rubbing alcohol and a rag and wipes himself down, before handing you a clean rag. At least he’s decent enough to do that.

He doesn’t stick around long. When you look up from cleaning yourself, you’re alone in the little block again, with the smell of sex and antiseptics rapidly going from arousing to just kind of gross. It’s amazing what sexual frustration does for your perceptions; you have no idea how you managed to want more of it earlier.

You’re definitely more concerned with the fact that you’ve got a belly full of someone else’s material at the moment, though. The weight of it in your genebladder is getting  _ really  _ uncomfortable now that you aren’t lying on your back. You wait for a little while and hope that someone is coming to give you a pail, because it doesn’t look like there are any pails in this block, and the minutes tic by without any notice on that. Or at least it feels like minutes; you can’t really tell in your mounting discomfort.

You consider finding your clothes and awkwardly making your way to the main part of the medbay again, to Hell with the fact that you’d probably soil them if you tried to walk. You don’t have to consider it for very long, at least; the door opens again, and for a split second you’re kind of worried that you’ll be expected to get fucked again while you barely have control of your basic motor functions back just yet.

Kanaya, thankfully, doesn’t motion for you to lie down or anything as she shuts the door. She looks you up and down once, clinically, before letting her shoulders down a little in what you hope is relief. 

“That went better than expected.” She says, and you kind of want to laugh and kind of want to throw the cum-soaked rag at her for it. But she frowns at the wound on your shoulder and motions for you to come a little closer.


	7. To Leave Behind, To Find Again part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intermission One, Part One: Kanaya remembers the time right before leaving Alternia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year and sorry for the long wait between chapters! I've also got a lot of commissions lined up this month so I likely won't be updating any of my work for a little while unless I somehow finish something between each commission. Likelier than you'd think, but still not very likely. (I also apologize for ending where I do with this chapter, but I do know what happens next, so even if it takes a while, it'll probably be slightly more refined.)
> 
> Intermissions are also a thing I've never really done before, so I don't know if this will happen more than once throughout the story. Mostly they're here to have a little break from writing Karkat's POV, so they'll all be from the POVs of different members of the An Unfortunate Honor cast.
> 
> Kanaya's is up first, because I've always wanted to write something for her but never had any inspiration for what. Please enjoy!
> 
> TRIGGERS TO BE FOUND IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> Zombies (passing mention)  
> Blood  
> Gore (mild)  
> Vampirism  
> Body horror (mild)

Your name is Kanaya Maryam and you’re starting to wonder why you were assigned aboard the )(IS Maelstrom.

Well, you don’t. Not in the slightest. But sometimes you reminisce.

You were raised by a Virgin Mothergrub for a lusus, which died, as expected, around the time you were six sweeps old. You would have been slated for death had you been any other troll, with any other blood color, with any other custodian.

Thankfully, you were you. A quick search online, some really obscure Greydit forums, and a deepnet Trollian memo where jadebloods both on and off planet liked to congregate later, you’d gorged yourself on information both useful and bizarre, armed yourself with what to do and a few well-wishes, and taken your chainsaw to the still-cool carcass.

The matriorb was there as promised, gleaming and gross in her dripping innards. You picked up your bloody ticket to Ascension and carried it inside, running your fingers over the disturbingly hornlike protrusions all over its surface.

None-too-fondly, you remember the process of packing up the necessities and a handful of sentimental tokens, and leaving the safety of your hive in the cover of night. By day you hid in dugout hollows in the sand with a tent you had to bury, dig out, and re-bury in the dark every pre-dawn and moonrise, before the shambling, fungal undead could find you and spore.

You don’t know how long it took until you found the Brooding Caverns. Stumbled upon them, really; you were exhausted, delirious, and maybe kind of despondent, and when you looked ahead and saw the swaying fronds of what you thought was an oasis, you dragged your miserable self the rest of the way and collapsed in the mud by the water.

You were found like that because you were sobbing so loud. It probably wasn’t that loud, but when everyone in the area stays underground, the sound of someone sobbing by the onion patch is much louder.

Once you’d regained your composure (and changed out of your muddy clothes), you presented the cavern keeper with the matriorb. The ghoulish woman _probably_ (hopefully) just a very, very old troll took it from your hands. Then she sniffed you, nodded in satisfaction, and gestured for you to leave before promptly stabbing you in the back.

Quite literally. You had just enough time to turn before the end of the blade burst out of your chest in a spray of green before she yanked it back out. You collapsed in a heap, more from shock than pain. You bled out at her feet. You _died_.

You woke up.

Glowing.

 _Starving_.

A much younger troll than the keeper handed you a heavy bowl and you didn’t even look at what was in it before bringing it to your lips and greedily slurping it down. It tasted like meat and metal and some kind of vinegar, but you couldn’t feel anything but liquid. It was, after nearly a month of crackers, dried fruit, and desert vermin, the best thing you’d ever tasted.

As soon as it was empty and you’d licked up the dregs, you handed it back and asked her what the _fuck_ just happened. You ached all the way through where you’d been stabbed, and you were pretty damn sure that should be immediately lethal even to a highblood. Also, you were still glowing.

She sliced open her wrist without flinching and let the blood fill the bowl before twisting a tourniquet around her arm. You listened, wide-eyed and sipping much slower now, as she explained that the keeper was making sure you had the requirements to take the matriorb to another planet come Ascension.

 _Your_ Ascension, you thought, before she corrected you. You only had another sweep.

That’s how you learned you had the rainbowdrinker parasite. That’s also how you learned it _existed_ , and that you couldn’t stay forever. You couldn’t even stay as long as a normal troll, though you spent half the remaining sweep begging the cavern-keeper to give you longer, and the other half in frustrated resignation.

You stayed in the caverns and learned about the things you would need to do _besides_ bringing the matriorb to another planet, and ticked off the days before Ascension until there were only two.

Just two, right before you would leave the planet forever. You felt like those two days must have swallowed up all the time before them.

Before those two days were up, before the carrier pods were to land, you packed some of your things, a ship’s pass the keeper herself had ordered for you, and the matriorb, dry and clean and throbbing in your hands like your own bloodpusher.

Dawn rose the color of lavender, cool and silent over the sand and dry, scrubby grass, and you set off in an ancient-looking dunebuggy with one of the planetbound auxiliatrices, towards the terminals, to wait with hundreds or maybe thousands or more other trolls, all three sweeps older than you.

By midday, the jagged, red shapes of what felt like half fleet hung waiting in the sky. You looked up at them, shielding your eyes from the sun, and before you knew it you were at the terminal. You don’t remember the name of the auxiliatrix who brought you there. Maybe you forgot to ask her. But she stayed with you until other trolls started arriving, by lusii or shuttlebugs or even old, gas-guzzling machines like the dunebuggy, most in sun coats and barely a handful sporting jade signs like you.

You called Vriska, Eridan, Sollux, and Karkat with an actual payphone, with the glitching holoscreen and the minutes counted in ceagars, because the terminal you stayed in didn’t have good enough bandwidth for you to use Trollian’s viewports. You remember Vriska cheering you on and saying she wished she were in your place, and Eridan trying to be pragmatic about it, trying to give you parting advice with stories he’d read about life in the fleet without prying into your reasons for not staying in the caverns. You could swear they sounded worried for you, even though they wouldn’t say so.

Sollux told you, tersely, to stay safe, you were an idiot, and he would wire you what helpful digital resources he could. You never did hear back from him after he put down the phone, and you don’t think you ever will.

Karkat, of course, went the extra mile. He shouted himself hoarse for as long as your wallet would let you talk to him  and you let him, because this was going to be the last time for the next three sweeps- maybe longer- you’d ever get to hear any of your friends. Alternian signals weren’t strong enough to reach the next system for livefeeds; Sollux had taught you as much.

You savored it until the line went dead, shooshing him softly, and tried not to pay mind to how obscenely pale it was even as you stifled your glow for how much you were blushing.

But come sundown there was a knock on your door, and where you expected someone waiting for their pass number to call was Karkat instead, scleras so red you thought he must have been angry at you, _furious_ at you, and you’d reflexively drawn your strife specibus when he sniffed and you realized he was crying, not glowing.

You couldn’t look away. He looked so much _less_ in person than you expected someone like him to be, his too small horns, his too-worn clothes, not a spot of color on him except his horns and his eyes.

The red of his bloodshot eyes was wrong, bright as molten glass.

The both of you just stood there, you in dumb silence and him biting back sobs, before he looked down at his feet.

“Move aside. I wasn’t done yelling at you yet.” His voice cracked, and he hiccuped, and you ached all through your bloodpusher all the more.

“I think you should rest your throat. You almost broke your record back there.” You said, but you stepped aside for him and he shuffled in, eyes never leaving yours and giving you no chance to look away. (They gleamed, wetly, like a normal troll’s eyes, but _they were the wrong kind of red._ )

“What are you doing here?” You asked, shutting the door.

“I’m doing what I said. I’m yelling at you, for leaving Alternia _forever_ , when _literally none of our friend group should even be setting a single nub near an Ascension terminal_ .” He finally looked away to clutch his horns (you exhaled, quietly.) “Aren’t we hatched from the same brood? Fuck, Kanaya, we’re _seven. You’re_ seven. I’m missing out on three sweeps of your life and I’m going to miss _you_ , you shithive cholerspawn!”

He keeps going, and you tune out until he’s right in your face, and you have no choice but to see every bright, mutant vein in the yellows. Your mouth goes dry with the realization.

“What the fuck has you spacing out? Besides, you know, being about to launch yourself into the unforgiving void.” He asks.

“Your color.” You say, before you can think.

He falls silent. You can almost feel his horror before you raise a weak little smile to calm him.

He narrows his eyes and sniffs hard. “Shut up.” He snaps, fondly.


	8. To Leave Behind, To Find Again part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intermission One, Part two: Kanaya remembers a little time with a visitor in the hours before leaving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is still alive! I plan for a smut scene to be in the next chapter, and then a little more after that. This intermission is taking a bit longer than I initially planned, but I don't really mind. Will return to the main story soon, hopefully!
> 
> In other news, I'll be going back to college in about a month, so I guess that's gonna either really bump up my productivity as I try to stave off boredom, or really tank it. We'll see when it happens I suppose.
> 
> If you're still reading this story, thank you! I'm sorry that it's so slow to update. As always, please mention it if you see a typo or in-chapter discrepancy anywhere!
> 
> TRIGGERS TO BE FOUND IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> consumption of still-live organisms (implied)  
> gore (mild, implied)  
> gratuitous alien food talk (not all that alien, spot the real life dishes if you can; I put in some of my favorites)

Your name is Kanaya Maryam and you remember, sweeps ago, when you’d left Alternia at seven sweeps old.

But that’s getting ahead of things.

You had one more night before your carrier pod was set to Ascend, and outside of the skep, throngs of vendors’ carts crowded around the terminal. Lowbloods and midbloods almost all around your age plied overpriced wares to those set to board the pods, a taste of home to send them off or a taste of Alternia’s elsewheres before they lost the chance forever.

You scurried from stall to stall with some of the little money you’d brought along, buying streetside food and glinting baubles. The trinkets were junk; cheap plastic and metal and rhinestones and sequins, breakable and tacky, but you’d never been to the city in your life and this was your last chance to bring part of Alternia to the stars with you. But the  _ food _ . 

Spicy, sticky, sweet; definitely nothing like the jadebloods had, reminding you just how far from the desert you were. All around you was grilled, fruity fungus and whole sea creatures and mysterious meats that couldn’t possibly be grubflesh, crusted with spices or dripping with sauce. Too gamey, too flavorful, to ever be the grubflesh you’d eaten in the caverns. Occasionally, live things, stuck through with a skewer or sold in sealed bowls, with tentacles and too many legs and definitely too many eyes.

You were pretty sure someone could kill themselves eating this stuff. A few had probably died  _ getting _ it. Still, you sampled a lot of it, even the seafood, and bought some grilled cactus and little bags of whatever else looked good. The grilled cactus mostly in case you couldn’t stomach anything else, one of the few things you were familiar with from the caverns, and a few pieces of fruit you’d never seen before, just to round it out. Molluscs in basins of water blinked at you as you passed, and a bronzeblood with a blinded eye offered you handfuls of gleaming, eyeless fish, still gasping for water, to which you declined.

(You weren’t adventurous enough to try anything still alive.) 

(You bought candy, though. So much candy. You were bringing that with you on the ship to eat, except the cottoncandy, which you finished on the way back to the skep.)

You and Karkat stuffed your faces with it when you got back to your block, sitting on the floor and surrounded by your purchases. He ate voraciously at first, before seeming to realize you were still there and slowing down, flicking bits of locust at you when you pointed it out. He’d stopped crying at least, and you thought it would be as good a time as you’d ever get to ask about his blood; the food and your stories and your laughter, tinged with the bitter knowledge that you may never see him again after this, probably urged your curiosity on.

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve (you frowned at this) and bit into some kind of bun, what looked like grubsauce and pale slivers of spotted, spicy-smelling fruit squirting between his teeth. “You’ve been in the caverns.” He said, around a mouthful of bread and sticky filling, and you nodded as you meticulously crunched hot, fried scorpions between your molars, just on the edge of too spicy for you to eat. “You’ve probably seen this kind of thing happen, yeah?”

“You’ll have to be more specific, there were a lot of things I’d never seen before in the caverns.” You said, picking at your teeth with a scorpion’s claw. You gestured with the point of it before stabbing a dumpling and bringing it to your mouth. Some kind of sweetish bean mulch filled the wrapping, and you ate the scorpion claw with it. “All this food, for example.” 

He growled, and you smiled in a way you  _ hoped _ looked placating. “Forgive me, I’m being purposely obtuse. Your color isn’t new, but we... well.” You licked your lips of sauce and poked through another paper bag, rolling out handful of small, batter-fried eggs and tossing them in your mouth. Vinegary and a little rubbery, but they popped satisfyingly between your teeth as you chewed and contemplated your words. “We tended to cull those before they even got to  _ pupate _ .”

You wondered if that had been the wrong thing to say. You saw a faint tremor in the lines of his brows, a deepening in the lines around his mouth. But he shook his head and took a deep breath. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I figured you would, that’s the best thing you could do; keep those kids from developing enough spongematter to realize how fucked they are. It’s…” He waved a hand, vaguely.

“Mercy?” You offered.

He shrugged, and wiped his eyes.

“That doesn’t explain much.” You pointed out, as he twisted the cover off a paper bowl.

“I know.” His lip curled bitterly. “But that’s it; all I know is I got really fucking lucky on the way out, and at least not too sponge-deprived to survive soon after.” Chopped vegetables and thin slices of pinkish meat floated among the noodles, and he didn’t even bother with the plastic spoon or the little green ball of citrus as he started slurping up the steaming broth. You wondered at how much he could put away; you were getting full, and it looked like he never  _ would _ be full.

(But, ah, asking about it would be too much. You had  _ some _ decorum, even then.)

“But I guess you weren’t, since you’re here.” He said, as he put down the bowl to breathe, peering at you over the rim. You felt again your lusus’ gleaming guts slick under your hands, her blood pooling at your feet and clinging to your sleeves...

You sniffed. “Yes, that’s a tactful way to put it.” If your voice was a little sharper than you intended, you weren’t too torn up about it. “But I’m still luckier than most, if you believe in such a thing as luck. Circumstances being sorry and unusual as they are aside, it’s good that I was given something to do.” You smiled, your lips feeling very slightly cracked and sticky. “The sendoff is nice, too.”

You glanced to the holodisplay on the wall, a readout of your carrier pod’s ETA counting down against a backdrop of the sky above the terminal. It struck you, just how far you’d come and how close it was. You had enough time to rest, and Karkat had enough time to head home, not that you really wanted him to. You didn’t think you were sad, but you felt something like how pressed flowers might; thin, faded, dry.

Too dry. It felt like it had been days since you’d fed properly, rather than hours.

“Kanaya?” You pulled your attention back to ground level. Karkat still sat crosslegged in front of you, and it struck you just how close he was; how you could feel his breath stirring the air between you, fragrant with spices and warmth and life. You were hungry, but a different kind of hungry that couldn’t be sated by batter-fried eggs and sugared locusts.

Maybe you should have bought those live things in bowls. You didn’t have the money to consider it by that point, though. You eyed the curve of his throat with a little more need than you really wanted to admit to, and he  _ noticed _ , much to your chagrin.

He chewed his lip and pushed himself a little closer. “I’m gonna miss you, okay? Don’t forget about me or anyone else down here while you’re gallivanting on some distant planet and seducing aliens or whatever. If I run into you again someday and the first thing you say is fucking ‘I’m sorry, who are you?’ then Empress help me, I will punch you right in the teeth.”

You couldn’t help but chuckle. “You sound like I’m already about to leave. Are you so eager to head back to your hive already? We still have a few hours to kill… and maybe I could convince you to let me bring a bit of you with me.”

He snorted. “Think they’d notice me hiding in your luggage?”

“Definitely. Sorry about that.” You shook your head, smiling sadly at him, though again your eyes were drawn to his neck. “I was thinking more a lock of hair, or a memory, or a kiss.” 

You paused pointedly as he side-eyed you, and your smile was a little less melancholy and a little more teasing, a little more what he knew you for. “Or a phial of blood, if you’re so inclined. I’m not picky, and you love that sort of thing.” 

Though you  _ were _ kind of hoping for the blood.

He ran a hand down his face and looked at the ceiling, giving you a little too much view of his bared throat. It would have been so easy to lean in and  _ bite _ , take from him rather than wait for it, but he was- is!- your  _ friend _ . You couldn’t do that to a friend. That’s not how the disease called friendship works.

“It’s a little too pale, I think.” He said. It stung more than you expected it to, and you almost shooed him out then and there to wait for your carrier pod in peace. “But I think… I can live with that, yeah. I mean, fuck, if you never see me again, at least it’ll be a good memory, right?”

He gulped. You tilted your head, concerned, but then he tugged his sleeve up and held his hand out to you. You could almost see the veins in his wrist. You looked up to him.

“You’re not the only one who notices weird details, little miss rainbowdrinker.” He smiled ruefully, but tenderly. “Drink up. You have a big day ahead of you. Carry a part of me into the stars with you, you absolute fucking mess.”

“Thank you, you overdramatic  _ pupa _ .” You took his wrist with a smile, traced your fingertips over the delicate skin in the dip of his wrist, and then into his palm. You looked him in the eyes, careful as you sliced into his hand with your thumbnail.

He winced, but you could see him bearing it bravely, for you; your pusher ached with it, the genuine tenderness of it, from this scrappy little thing that called you an idiot more than he called you his friend but meant the latter all the more. You toasted him with his own hand, and almost apologetically raised the cut to your lips.


	9. To Leave Behind, To Find Again part 3 END

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intermission One, Part Three: Kanaya remembers parting, and thinks about finding again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am  
> So sorry about how long this took.
> 
> But on the upside, we're finally done with the intermission! I've never done an intermission before, so to anyone who's still reading this, thank you for sticking around! We'll get to the egglaying proper in the next chapter.
> 
> TRIGGERS TO BE FOUND IN THIS CHAPTER:  
> Harm to minors (implied)  
> medical gore (mild)  
> addiction mention

Your remember, you were _lonely_ ; you were about to leave Alternia forever, didn't know how long he was going to stay by you in that cramped little skep, and he was warm, he offered you his blood...

Well, you don't really regret it, either. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

He stayed silent as you finished drinking and stitched up the wound. Once you knotted the last stitch and snipped the thread, you tossed the used needle in the garbage and set out a new one expectantly. He looked at it, blinking, and then up at you.

"It makes me slightly more hesitant to do this- _slightly-_ to know that I'm gonna need more stitches. But you’re my friend and I don’t want you leaving Alternia distracted from weeping over your losses by your gastric sac."

"Can't really be helped." You said. Even then you felt the flutter of something sugary-pale under your skin. "But I'll let you choose where I bite into you next if that’s any consolation."

You considered a couple spots. His neck? Crossed out immediately. His wrist posed less issue; that was how you usually fed from the other auxiliatrices, and how they usually fed from each other. The thought of injuring him again so close to where you’d just stitched him up wasn’t so appealing, though. Maybe his other arm, somewhere higher, less obvious…

Either you were less subtle about studying him than you thought, or he had the same idea, because he huffed and raised his sleeve. Your eyes were immediately drawn to the crook of his elbow, pewter-grey wrigglerskin, and then he tapped the inner curve, the crease where a syringe might go for a blood test.

“You’re sure?” You asked, though already your hands shook like an addict, as you ached all through with hunger under your ribs and the tenderness of it all. You looked up at him as you pressed your mouth over his offered skin and felt it twitch under your tongue.

It wasn’t as warm as his palm, but the blood spilled easily into your mouth when you bit. Maybe too easily. You felt him shudder, twitching, as you drank your fill. You saw his lip curl in pain, saw his hand come up and thought for a moment he might pap you until he merely settled it on your shoulder. You imagined that maybe he hovered over your cheek for a second before deciding against it.

It stung, waiting for it, aching for it. You focused on dealing with the ache of hunger instead. (You savored him, for the warmth, and despite the slightly-off taste; he was malnourished back then, too much and too many cheap extenders in his diet, most likely.)

“Kanaya,” He breathed, hissed, a pained sound. You realized you were getting carried away and hastily pulled back- too hastily, because he gasped when you did; maybe from pain or maybe from the shock of seeing blood running down his arm as the vein was freed. “ _Fuck!_ ”

Your eyes followed the dripping line. “Shit.”

“Yeah, pretty much!” He moved to curl his arm against himself and you didn’t think, you only saw precious blood being wasted and you gripped his wrist tighter, pushing him back with a hand on his sternum as you dragged your tongue along the bright, burning lines. You couldn’t help yourself, couldn’t even hear him, though you could feel the thrum of his bloodpusher under your hand as it thudded like a little drum.

He groaned as you followed the line back to the wound. You heard, but you were too focused on keeping the blood from spilling, too focused on feeding, draining him dry; you were so hungry, and he was so warm.

He put a hand on your cheek and you froze.

Tentatively, he lifted his fingers, rubbing the pads of them along your temple when they made contact again. “Shh. _Shoosh._ ”

You would like to say you weep slowly. You would like to weep like the trolls in your favorite novels, elegantly, tears so thick you can’t tell if it’s lachrymal or sanguine, but it’s just not what happened. You were sniffling immediately, apologetically pulling away from his arm, ready to start bawling at the drop of a pin. You were starting to hiccup, even, and you must have been a horror to look upon, the beginning of a sob in your throat while blood dribbled from your half-open mouth. Your face gets blotchy when you cry, and you _hated_ it, still hate it even now, though you haven’t cried in a long time.

“Hey. _Hey_ , shoosh, you, if you cry I’m going to cry, too.” His voice cracked as he kept lightly papping your cheek, and every light press of his palm was like the Keeper’s blade through your chest again, burning, jagged pain, like bits of volcanic glass.

“I don’t want to go.” You blubbered, but it felt like a weight was lifted from you just from saying it, a crushing weight that sprang off your thoracic struts the moment you spoke, giving you just enough breath to keep going. “I’m too young, I don’t know what to do up there, I’ll fucking _die_ , Karkat, they’ll _eat me alive_ , and do you ever hear what Eridan says they do to wrigglers who stow away on the Ascension pods? I’m- _fuck_ , I want to go _home_ . I want to wait out the next few sweeps in my _coon_ , or even just back in the _caverns,_ I, I-I’m,”

You stopped there, a sharp sound behind your teeth, but it never made it out because he understood well enough to press his lips to yours in a tight, silencing seal. Blood still stained your mouth, snot was starting to drip down your upper lip; you sobbed and shivered against him and you could hear his voice crack when he tried to shoosh you around your fangs. It couldn’t have been pleasant.

He deepened the kiss anyway, nibbling your lower lip. You could smell his tears, too, all salt and sympathetic hormones. You groaned into his mouth and pushed him onto his back.

He tensed for a moment before wrapping his legs around your waist, and despite the sharp need to tell him everything you regret about this moment in your life, you stayed silent and ran your hands under his shirt. You made him moan your name, cracking like a chrysalis underfoot.  

You couldn’t bring him to the stars with you, but you could have him now. He understood  as much and sucked on the corner of your mouth, cleaning the stains of red off your skin as he kissed down your chin, down your neck. He buried his face somewhere around your collarbone and trilled, warm and sweet and tentative, pawing clumsily at your rumblespheres.

Pulling away left your lips and fingers and everywhere you’d touched each other tingling, moreso when you realized he didn’t want you to; he followed you, breathing in the same space, quick little pusher drumming a constant background beat in your head.

He reached up and tucked a bit of stray hair behind one of your ears, sticky with his own blood still. “Tell me what to do.” He said, voice heavy with promise, _I’ll do anything for you right now, right here, I will tear down the stars so you never have to leave._

It _hurt_.

You kissed him once on each eyelid and on the tip of his nose. “Just stay with me, until it’s time for me to go.”

He smiled, wanly, like it was everything he could do not to ask you for more. It made you hungry again, a vile, endless sort of feeling, and you pushed it away and guided his hands under your skirt. “Stay with me, make me remember something _good_ of Alternia. I’ve spent six sweeps alone and one underground. Make my _last night_.”

He nodded. His fingers trembled, and so did you when he got into the rhythm of it. It wasn’t a concupiscent fuck, neither of you had an inch of bulge showing between you, but he showed you how good he could be with those deft, calloused fingers and you showed him a thing or two about what you’d learned back in the Brooding Caverns.

You lay there beside him, naked and staring up at the ceiling. You traced idle shapes on his belly, and the slight ridges of scars too faint to see on his too-thin skin. “I’ll miss you. I’ll miss everyone.” You said.

“We’ll miss you, too.” He said, pursed his lips, and went on. “ _I’ll_ miss you, you fucking _mess_.”

You boarded the pod not too long later. As you watched Alternia recede from a porthole, you licked your lips and wondered what life would be like from then on. Nearly every troll on the pod was taller than you, and the guard eyed you suspiciously when she swiped your pass card through the reader, took the matriorb from your quivering hands, and ushered you into the orbiting hubship where you would find your first assignment, your crew, your new _home_.

Your remember, you spent seven sweeps on Alternia in the desert and the past four off it being shuttled from ship to ship in the deep, dark void, and none of it was ever home until you came upon the Maelstrom at eleven sweeps old, and even then you’re nearly twelve, and it’s only now that you find one of the few people who ever made your lonely oasis a home.

Your name is Kanaya Maryam and you miss Alternia, your friends, the life you never lived, but at least in this cramped little almost-hivecell, helping Karkat stand, some of it has found its way to you.

It will have to do.

 

END INTERMISSION ONE


	10. Act 2, chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We finally get to act two, where Karkat learns the ins and outs of being a breeder troll. Hooray!
> 
> Thank you for sticking around this long, and if you're a new reader, I deeply apologize for what will be an incredibly erratic schedule until my semestral break and probably even then.
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS:  
> Puking  
> Pregnancy  
> Pale weirdness  
> Probably more, comment if you spot anything.

You didn't have to hop on another bulge after Kanaya left like you thought you might have to. You can’t exactly being yourself to mind, your nook so sore from everything it’s been through that you can barely drag yourself to the inflatable ‘cupe. The sopor is even thinner and colder than the stuff you’d slept in back on Alternia, but when you sink into it and close your eyes, you fall asleep almost immediately.

What feels like hours later, you wake up for whatever reason and as soon as you move you’re hit with the  _ worst  _ wave of nausea you’ve ever felt in your life. The block almost tips sideways as you flounder weakly in the slime, trying to hold in the contents of your gastric sac.

“Oh,  _ finally _ .”

Strong, gloved hands seize you by the upper arms and yank you out of the slime, and you nearly lose your lunch then and there. The lights are too bright and the smells too intense, everything crowding you at once so hard that you can barely open your eyes. You can feel every thud of your bloodpusher in your temples.

You make a gurgling noise of complaint and hear a chuckle. The hands on your arms drag you to the edge of the ‘cupe and you cling to it like a soaked clawbeast, shivering just as hard. You still imagine the taste of Kanaya’s vomit in the back of your throat, and it was bearable earlier, but right now it  _ really _ doesn’t help your writhing guts.

One hand slicks back your dripping hair. “Easy, Vantas; you’ve been out for a lot longer than we expected you’d be.”

You peer up through the glare in your vision and the slime still sliding down your face to try and look at your caretaker properly, and you don’t recognize the greenblood looking at you but she’s got overlarge front teeth and overlarge eyes. Half a second later you realize, oh, those are ocular enhancers. The lenses take up half her face, round and shining.

Another wave of nausea hits you, but nothing comes up. You gag on your own spit, dry-heaving over the side of the ‘cupe, half expecting something horrible to crawl up the back of your throat as your guts cramp. Your caretaker whistles awkwardly until you can compose yourself.

“How are you feeling?” She asks. It’s sickeningly pale until she adds, “I have to make sure you’re gestating properly, those cramps looked like they could damage something internal. I know they’re supposed to be normal, but it’s really something else to watch from the outside!”

“How long was I-  _ urgh- _ how long was I asleep?” You groan. You press one of your hands over your eyes, shielding them from the light.

“Four cycles.” She says. You hear scribbling on a clipboard and feel her turn you over. You feel… bloated, for lack of better term; the sopor swishes oddly around you as she hums and pours more over your bare chest. “About a perigee and a half. It’s the middle of a day cycle right now.”

Two whole nights and days. You realize you were sick because you’re  _ starving. _ You’re suddenly worried about your friends, and Kanaya in particular. Something sugary comes up the back of your throat again, cold and awful. “Kanaya,”

“She’s not here, sorry. It’s just good old Mediculler Harley here. Call me Zheyde.” It sounds almost like “jade”, which is a little weird, but you don’t really care. Zheyde keeps talking, more to herself than to you. “Getting pretty round in the middle, and your nook’s nicely sealed up from the additives to the slime. We’re lucky with this one! Maybe it’s the mutation?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” You hiss, rubbing your face, and then your hand drops down to your belly. You recoil in horror when you feel the bloat there, and your eyes go wide as you look down.

The first thing you think is, this can’t be your body. The second thing you think is, it  _ is _ , and that’s one of the worst things you’ve ever seen.

Where once your middle was flat and toned, it’s distended now, stretch marks marring your hips. It looks impossibly huge from this angle, and feels heavy and tight. You can’t get up. Your breathing quickens. Zheyde keeps talking like nothing’s happening, and your mouth is so dry you can feel the rasp of your tongue along the roof of it.

“Please shut the fuck up,” You finally snap, “And get me something to drink or I’m going to pass out.”

She stops, and huffs. “It wouldn’t kill you to be more pleasant to the troll tasked with watching over you throughout this process, don’t you think?” She grumbles, but she does press a bottle into your hands. The liquid inside is pinkish and syrupy, doesn’t look like it’ll help with the nausea or the thirst at all.

She must note your apprehension, because she presses it more insistently to your fingers. “It’s water mixed with nutrients and jade slime.” She says. You balk but she narrows her eyes. “Drink it,  _ fuckass _ , or the eggs will come out too small to eat, and then where will the rest of us be? Besides, you’ll need to get used to it while you’re gestating.”

You think of Kanaya. You think of Pomelo, and Tassit, and all of them hungry because you couldn’t keep down a little bloodied water. You grit your teeth, uncap the bottle, and down it all in one go.

It tastes so, so much worse mixed with water and whatever salty-sweet nutrition paste they must have stirred in there, and it’s slightly sticky, clinging to your throat. You’re so hungry you don’t even gag, though, and it settles in your guts in a way that’s uncannily satisfying.

Zheyde hands you another bottle. You look balefully at it, but knock it back much like the other one. She hands you a third.

“What the fuck?” You ask her. “How many of these am I supposed to have?”

“As many as you can keep down.” She sounds almost apologetic, but mostly stern behind her cheer. “Now drink up. I’ll be here if you need to take a piss or something. You won’t be having anything else to eat for the duration of the first pregnancy.”

“Pregnancy.” It feels weird just to say. “How long should it be?” You ask, more than a little unnerved as you sip the drink this time. It’s only marginally less horrible on the third go, but now you can feel it starting to back up in your throat. You only manage half the bottle before you have to put it down to breathe, and to keep it all from coming back up. You don’t want to have to drink this  _ again _ if you don’t have to.

She checks the wall display. “By my calculations, you’ve got about two or three more cycles before you’re set to lay. The slime, your apparently freakish fertility, and the amount of time you spent knocked out means you missed most of it, actually!”

Two or three more cycles. And you’re going to keep getting knocked up as soon as you recover from each one, if that. The thought makes your gastric sac turn again, and you have to fight to keep down its contents. It would be amazing if it wasn’t so disturbing.

“Please get out.” You say, numb, and as affronted as Zheyde looks, she at least complies. Before she can get out entirely, though, you call after her.

“What?” She asks, hands on her hips.

“And get Kanaya, I. I need to see her.” You say, your tongue still heavy with sleep. She sighs, but whatever look on your face seems to be enough of a justification for her.

“I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, rest up and keep drinking the nutrifluid, okay?” It feels wrong when she says it, on the edge of pale and nothingness. It’s only when she’s gone that you finally can’t hold it anymore, at least.

Small mercy that; the cramps still wrack your tired body like nothing else, and the light is blinding as the bile is sour. You watch the spreading puddle on the floor through bleary eyes until you hear the door open again, and a soft voice going “Oh dear.”

Hands cup your face, welcomingly cool on your feverish skin. Kanaya’s face comes into focus a second later, and thankfully you’ve finished puking enough that you don’t throw up on it, though she’s failing to hide her disgust.

“I hope you don’t mind, but I’m not cleaning  _ that _ up.” She says, petting sopor from your hair, hand between your horns. “Or rather I will because nobody else in here is going to, but I want you to behave in return.”

Your distended belly shifts and reminds you that you’re full of wriggling offspring that will never see the caverns, and the thought makes you never want to be touched again. She ignores your grasping fingers to sop up your sick and throw it in the refuse vent where it will be guided to the fuel crucible, and then grips the hair on the back of your head in a way that bids no argument.

Not that you wanted to argue, for once. She kisses you slowly and you drink, and this time you manage to keep it down.


	11. Act 2, chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow this fic isn't dead. Surprise!
> 
> Thank you to 4thewords for getting my ass in gear for writing in general, and thank _you_ for sticking around to finally get to this part. Fuck, I really haven't updated this since last year? It's August 2018? Really?
> 
> I'm a fucking mess.
> 
> CONTENT WARNINGS:  
> References to bad decisions made under bad circumstances  
> More pregnancy  
> Emeto mentions

Your next waking cycle is worse than the first one.

You’re wracked with cramps and cravings that leave you weak and miserable as a lame grub. Your whole body feels sluggish and slow, and the sopor you’re sleeping in- and you do spend most of the time asleep, when Kanaya isn’t feeding you watered-down jade slime or helping you with getting to the refuse block for the most basic of bodily functions besides sleep- only marginally soothes the awfulness of it.

“And I have to keep doing this.” You mutter, while Kanaya helps you lower yourself into the makeshift ‘cupe again. “Or at least I have to until we get more food. If we get another shipment of food. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were leaving us to fend for ourselves in this Helltrap ship.”

“Mmhmm.” She isn’t listening, but you find her presence comforting all the same. You remember, awkwardly, the time you fucked her before she left Alternia, and with the tender way she runs her fingers along the curves of your horns- it’s so pale, the way she holds you, that you can’t imagine her touch with any more closeness than that. The way she looks after you feels closer than way back then.

You don’t know what to make of it. You don’t dare hope you can make something of it, after how this entire fiasco started with a positive assumption.

But  _fuck_  do you need some kind of emotional support right now.

She looks at you through long, slightly-curled lashes and furrows her brow right over the bump of her nose like she did when you were six, like when she first saw you in your ratty sneakers and threadbare sweaters. She strokes your hair over your brow and keeps her hand there, and you realize, blearily, that she's checking your temperature.

Then she speaks.

"You don't seem to have a fever." She says. You blink slowly as she continues. "I've kept you on your hydration and slime regimen pretty much perfectly, and besides just how well the slurry took to your eggs..." She purses her lip, and the crease furrows deeper. You feel like you've upset her somehow.

"Something's wrong, isn't there." You say.

She shrugs. "You tell me. All your physical signs are perfectly in-line with what we should be expecting, but you look like you've swallowed a lot worse than jade slime."

The thought turns your gastric sac a little more, and you groan, sliding her hand over your eyes. "First of all, please don't talk about jade slime any more than necessary. I'm so fucking sick of jade slime. It's all I can taste."

"Hmm." Is all she offers. You hesitate, but she hasn't pushed you away; instead, she's giving you light, friendly scritches around the temples. You take a deep breath and continue.

"Second of all... I was thinking about what happened. Before you left Alternia, you know?" 

She stops the friendly scritches and you brace for the worst. But instead of her claws tangling in your hair, or worse, her just up and leaving, she just sighs.

"I think about it sometimes, too." She says, wistfully. She chuckles. "It was..." She trails off and you try to fill in the blanks.

"Embarrassing and inappropriate?"

She rolls her tongue a little and then nods. "Yes, exactly that. Emotions were running high and I didn't really know what to make of them at the time. Sorry if that managed to bother you for so long."

It didn't really, but hearing her apologize for it twists a knife that you didn't even know was in your gut in the first place. You feel sick, of this situation and of not being able to connect with her and of everything that led up to this point. You don't realize you're growling until she takes her hand from your eyes and you're looking at her upside-down.

"Do you want to talk about it?" She asks.

You blink, once.

She actually looks nervous. Kanaya never looks, or at least you don't very clearly remember her ever being nervous, aside from maybe when she saw you cry. You feel a flutter under your skin like you had when you were seven and scared of being discovered for your blood, scared of losing her forever to the wide space between the stars. You're still scared, you realize. But you at least know what it is that you're feeling now, after a few regretful one-night jams with all the wrong people. You're not just scared for yourself.

"You don't have to if you don't want to." She implores, in a way that suggests she really wants you to, and that she really has a few things she'd like to say to you too.

So why not take her up on the offer? You've fucked things up before, you've fucked a hundred things up on the way here; and you let yourself have what you had when you were waiting at that terminal on Alternia around what feels like forever ago.

"... Karkat?"

She sounds small, and wanting; just as wanting as you are. Something hot and stinging gets in your eye and you turn your head and grip her wrist and just.

You drop her hand on your face again and start purring.

"I think I really need to talk about it, yeah." You say. The tight knot of pain in your throat and in your guts doesn't ease any, but you hear a soft  _oh_  above you, and she runs her thumb along the curve of your jaw in a way that makes the tears spill faster. "I'm sorry. I don't even know what I'm sorry for. I feel like I've fucked something up and I don't even know what it is yet, and here I am dumping all this on you like a fucking _wriggler._ "

"Shhhh." She cards her fingers through your hair, but her voice cracks a little, too, when she speaks. "We  _both_ made a mess of things back then. I missed you, you know; it's been a long time and I think we have a lot of catching up to do."

You groan, grateful and pliant against her cool, careful touch. She's purring; you can feel the vibration of her thoracic struts against the back of your skull, and before you know it, you're purring too. You wonder if any of the other egg carriers are getting treatment like this, or if by some bizarre twist of fate, the Universe  _isn't_ conspiring to make everything horrible for you all the way down.

You try not to think about that before your natural tendency to assume the worst can tell you about the myriad ways it could actually go wrong. It's a little easier with her papping and purring right there, grounding you in the present and how nice it actually is to just exist like that, floating in the slime while Kanaya holds you.

You hate to ruin it, but you have to break out of the quiet to know.

"Are we... a thing now?" You ask. Your bloodpusher isn't beating any faster than usual, but you certainly feel like it  _should_. "Are we- can we really be a pale thing, now? Is that a thing we can do?"

She doesn't stop rubbing her palm against your cheek, but she does slow down a little, before she picks up again and answers. You crack open one eyelid to look at her and she smiles at you looking as unsure as you feel.

"I think we can." She says, pauses, and chuckles to herself like this is some fucked up, private joke in her head, like she's thought about it a lot more than you have and she's come up with every version of the world where this does and doesn't happen and it's  _still_  nowhere near as weird and fucked up as what's actually happening. You can hardly believe it yourself, and you find it in you to smile.

Nervously, you hold up a couple fingers, spread slightly apart. Half a diamond, and you wait for her to see it. When she does, her smile falls in surprise, and then contemplation, and then she takes her free hand and does the same, fingers resting point-to-point with yours.

"I have to admit, this is a lot less melodramatic than I was expecting, for an official moirallegiance." She says, before taking your hand in hers and twining the fingers together. You can imagine you're probably burning her a little, with the stark difference between your blood colors. "But I suppose I'll have to give it time, won't I?"

Even you have to laugh at that. "Yeah, I'll find some way to make this whole thing a lot more awkward and embarrassing for everyone involved; that's just me, that's the Karkat Vantas brand." Your laughter trickles away and you sigh. "But for what it's worth, I don't  _want_  to fuck this up, okay?"

"Okay." She says, with the most understanding look on her face you could imagine, and it kind of makes you sick again.

Actually, that's not what's making you sick. You groan, clutching your middle. Another cramp hits you, and you nearly throw up, eyes wide when you feel an answering  _twinge,_  somewhere deep in your nook.

"K-Kanaya?" You gulp. "How long- how long is the gestation period supposed to be?"

She furrows her brow to process what you said, and then her eyes go wide. She tears herself away from you and calls for help while the pain spikes, suddenly, to something almost unbearable, and you nearly lose your tenuous grip on your lunch.

It's when you feel a stronger, stinging cramp inside of you, familiar in its wrongness, that you realize you're about to _lay._


End file.
